The House that Built Zack
by LadyNightRunner
Summary: After all the muss and fuss surrounding resurrections and rebuilding and forming a functional family unit, Zack has one thing he needs to do, to be at peace with himself; he is going back, to Gongaga.


Inspired by 'The House the Built Me' by Miranda Lambert. This is part of an ongoing series in my head, involving the resurrection of a number of perviously deceased characters and their integration back into society.

* * *

It took awhile for everything at 7th Heaven to settle down. First there was Angeal's arrival, then temporarily moving the whole household out while the building was renovated and expanded, then getting the Remnants dealt with in a way that would help them adjust to life as almost normal people, and then there was working for Cloud.

Zack had been alive for a year and two months to the day when he packed a backpack and headed for Gongaga.

_I know they say you can't go home again;_

_I just had to come back one last time_

_Ma'am I know you don't know me from Adam,_

_but these handprints on the front steps are mine._

_Up those stairs, in that little back bedroom_

_is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar._

_And I bet you didn't know, under that live oak, _

_my favorite dog is buried in the yard._

The house was still there, as was the rest of the farm, but there had never been chocobo in the barn, nor had there been honeysuckle trained up the side of the house. The fence surrounding the yard had been recently painted, the same clean white as the original coat that Zack had done himself.

He had to duck under the trellis of roses that arched over the gate, because Ma had been short and Dad had been five foot eleven in his socks and Zack had been a scrawny five foot five when they'd built it, but the richly colored orange roses were still healthy, the heavy blossoms as wide as his palm and velvety soft.

There hadn't been a stone path to the porch when he'd left, but now there was, made of thick slabs of slate and following the path his bare feet had beaten into the lawn over the years, with a smaller branch cutting off and around to the shed.

Five concrete steps up to the porch, the bottom right corner chipped where he had run the lawn mower into it because he wasn't paying attention. The second step from the top had three handprints in it, each with a name under it. Zack knelt on the steps and traced the four letters under the smallest print, then ran his finger around the edge of it. His hand dwarfed the mark he'd left when he was nine.

The screen door creaked open and a woman peered out, keeping the door between her and Zack.

"Can I help you with something?"

Zack looked up sharply.

"Er….yeah, sorry. I grew up here." He chuckled softly. "Ma and Dad and me left these handprints when we finished the porch."

"You're…Zack?" she asked, glancing down at the handprint Zack was still touching.

"Yes, ma'am. I just…I wanted to come back and see if the place was still standing. 's been a long time."

The woman hesitated, fiddling with her apron for a moment.

"Well…my husband isn't home, but…would you like to come in for a few minutes? Maybe have some lunch?"

_I thought if I could touch this place or feel it_

_this brokenness inside me would start healing._

_Out there it's like I'm someone else, _

_I thought that maybe I could find myself._

_If I could just come in I swear I'll leave._

_Won't take nothing but a memory_

_from the house that built me._

Like any farmer's wife, Renee Carter knew how to feed a man. She piled a plate with leftover meatloaf, mashed potatoes, fresh green beans, and biscuits and handed it to Zack, then set about putting extra everything on the table and finishing it all off with a tall glass of milk. When Zack had worked his way through the meal, she eyed him, then served up a sizable slice of peach pie for him.

"Thanks, Mrs. Carter, Zack murmured, carrying his plate over to the sink and rinsing it.

"Of course. Did you want to wander around for a bit? I don't mind." Zack's easy smile and friendly, open manner had reassured Renee of his harmlessness and she had chatted happily with him while he ate.

"Yeah, I would. Thanks."

The fifth, eleventh, and twelfth stairs on the way up to the second floor all creaked. Years ago, Zack had had to hop over them on his way down and jam his feet in between the banister railings on the way up to keep them from making any noise when he was trying to sneak in or out. The banister was silky smooth under his hand, polished by his father until not a single splinter remained and then polished further by years of Zack sliding down it whenever his mother wasn't looking.

Upstairs, at the end of the hall, there was a door painted green. It had a sign taped to it that read 'Jason's Cave'. Zack remembered when he had stuck a sign in roughly the same place, though his had said 'No Girls Allowed'. Ma had objected, so he had replaced it with another, this one with a simple, non-discriminatory 'Keep Out'.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside. One wall had been painted with a cave scene and the window seat had been reupholstered, but it was still familiar. Zack headed over to the window, absently letting one hand roll over the foot of the bed. Then he paused and turned to get a better look at it, surprised by a familiar dip in the wood. Sure enough, under the black paint it was his old bedstead; the dip was where he had used his pocketknife to dig a knot out of the wood.

"Damn," he whispered. He'd spent hours sitting on the bed with his uncle's guitar in his lap, playing the same chords over and over and over until he could recognize them in other songs and pick out the tunes of music he heard on the radio.

Kneeling on the window seat, he parted the curtains and peeked out into the back yard. The apple tree his mother had insisted they plant had grown considerably, shading a picnic table that was, if Zack remembered correctly, right over the grave he'd dug for Scraps, his first dog.

"You doing all right up there?" Renee called up the stairs.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Zack yelled back. He straightened and headed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

_Mama cut out pictures of houses for years,_

_From Better Homes and Garden magazines._

_Plans were drawn and concrete poured_

_and nail by nail and board by board, _

_Daddy gave life to Mama's dream._

Up until Zack was seven, he and his parents had lived with his grandparents on the other side of town. Pop-pop and Gram liked having them there, least of all because Zack's father had been more than willing to help out around the house in his free time, but Zack's mother had wanted a place of her own. She spent hours cutting pictures out of magazines, sticking this fence and this window and that porch together with glue in a huge scrapbook to form dream houses. She made notes on each of them, and let Zack help her put little stickers around them.

When Zack was eight, his father had made the final payment on a piece of land beyond the eastern edge of town, something he hadn't mentioned to anyone in the household. Zack was too young to understand why owning land made Ma cry and kiss Dad, but he did understand that something was going to happen.

That spring they began clearing land for the house. Zack ran around picking up sticks and rocks to get them out of the way while Dad and Pop-pop and Ma moved the larger things. He was allowed to sit in Pop-pop's lap when they brought the tractor in, high up on the huge machine.

Dad said he was the best nail-carrier that there ever was, and Zack was proud of his work; he fetched nails and screws and water and wire and hammers and lunch and Ma whenever he was told to. Sometimes he was allowed to saw boards to the right size, and he helped frame the walls in the kitchen.

It was finished in the fall of the next year, when Zack was about to turn ten. He put his handprint in the concrete of the new porch steps beside Ma's, and it suddenly occurred to him that he would be able to see it when he was grown up and as big as Dad- he had helped make something permanent and real.

But he'd left for the army before he was done growing. He was still a kid at fifteen, striding off down the dirt road to town with his backpack and his duffle bag, new boots pinching his feet, with his mother waving from the front porch, crying, and his father standing at the fence, just watching him go.

_I thought if I could touch this place or feel it_

_This brokenness inside me would start healing._

_Out there it's like I'm someone else, _

_I thought that maybe I could find myself._

_If I could just come in I swear I'll leave._

_Won't take nothing but a memory_

_From the house that built me._

Jeremy Carter was a big man, nearly as tall as Zack and certainly wider, with a curly mess of brown hair and dark eyes. He wasn't all too pleased to find a strange man in his house, but softened up once Zack explained himself.

Somehow, Zack wound up in the barn with him, polishing tack.

"So…uh…I don't s'ppose you know what happened to my parents, do you?" Zack ventured.

"Sure do," Jeremy said, turning a bridle over in his lap.

"D'you mind telling me?"

"Mr. Fair died in an accident about four years ago- some idiot he was working with trimming some trees in town didn't put a support under a branch and it fell on him."

"And Ma?"

"Geostigma."

Zack flinched. The stigma hadn't hit small towns as hard as it had hit the big cities, and he had hoped no one he knew would have been affected.

"How 'bout….the Grearys? Are they still around?"

"Mrs. Greary is. She your grandma?"

"Yeah, on my mom's side. She's really still kicking?"

"And screaming," Jeremy chuckled. "She's a feisty little thing, 'specially for her age."

"Sounds like her. Could you give me her address?"

"Be glad to."

Renee poked her head in the barn door. An eleven year-old boy peered around her, staring at Zack with wide eyes.

"Would you like to stay for dinner, Zack?"

"Aww, I don't wanna impose on-"

"Don't be silly! We'd love to have you."

"Were you _really_ a SOLDIER?" Jason asked.

"Uh-huh."

"Will you tell me about it? Did you ever meet General Sephiroth? Were you in the Wutai War? Did you ever fight a dragon?"

Zack laughed. "Looks like I don't have a choice now."

_You leave home, you move on and you do the best you can._

_I got lost in this whole world and forgot who I am._

_I thought if I could touch this place or feel it_

_This brokenness inside me would start healing._

_Out there it's like I'm someone else, _

_I thought that maybe I could find myself._

_If I could just come in I swear I'll leave._

_Won't take nothing but a memory_

_From the house that built me._

Darlene Greary lived in a tiny little cottage in the retirement village. According to the woman at the visitor's desk, she usually stayed awake until ten thirty or so, knitting or quilting or fiddling with whatever new project she had started up, so Zack had plenty of time to visit with her.

He felt a little silly when he knocked; the last time he'd seen his Gram, he had been turning fifteen and she had been presenting him with a brand new pair of boots and a small mess kit.

The woman who opened the door was eighty if she was a day, tiny and wrinkled but standing up straight. Her violet eyes were bright and intelligent. She looked up at Zack for a moment, and then smiled.

"I was wondering when you were going to come home," she said softly.

"Hi, Gram."

"Come on in, Zack. I imagine you have a lot to tell me."


End file.
